Two weeks before the midterm elections, we just learned that the Trump administration asked the nation's top election security agency to secretly get its hands on a voting machine and hack it. And they told staff not to alert the manufacturer if they found any flaws. That's according to a bombshell new investigation released today. And it's just one piece of a much bigger story about what this administration is doing to our elections. Vice President JD Vance mocked a protester demanding the Epstein files release, claiming that they're illegal simply because they were Hispanic. Donald Trump wants to rename and is urging New Mexico to rename itself to New America. All while the president is saying it is time for someone else to negotiate on behalf of Ukraine. Lots to cover. Make sure if you can subscribe to support this work. Your subscriptions help fuel this work. No ms, no one will stop me. And like, comment, share. The more you do, the more people see.
An exciting quick programming note: a lot of you have asked, and well, if you ask, you shall receive. On election night, set your calendars. I will be going live from 6:00 p.m. Eastern time to midnight Eastern time, 6 hours before polls close, all while elections are coming in, election results, and after polls close in states across the country. And we're going to be having some big guests, and we're going to be watching the elections together on Substack, YouTube, wherever you watch me, you will see it.
Today, just a few months into Trump's second term, we learned that political appointees at the Department of Homeland Security went to the Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agency, known as CISA. That's the agency whose job it is to protect our elections from hackers. Well, what they asked, well, was pretty interesting. Those appointees asked CISA to secretly acquire a voting machine to examine it and to report back so that the findings could be passed on to the White House. Here's what alarmed career staff: they were told not to alert the voting machine company if they found any vulnerabilities. That's the opposite of what CISA normally does. The whole point of finding a weakness is to fix it. One former official told ProPublica that they fear the administration wanted to keep the results, quote, in their back pocket to invalidate any election results they don't like. Staff told the appointees the request was impossible, in part because the people capable of pulling it off had just been laid off by Elon Musk's DOGE. Eventually, the appointees stopped pushing.
The White House says Trump has done more than any other president to ensure free and fair elections. But to be clear, while this was never carried out, think about what it tells you. An administration that keeps claiming our elections are vulnerable wanted to hack a voting machine in secret and keep any flaws to itself. And while that was happening, the administration was gutting the very agency meant to protect our elections. More than a thousand CISA employees had been laid off or pushed out, about a third of the entire agency. Trump's 2027 budget would cut another $700 million. State officials told ProPublica that CISA was literally non-existent during the critical planning period for these midterms. Trust took another hit when the administration released confidential information states had shared with CISA about the election to back up Trump's debunked fraud claims. When CISA's new acting director, a former Trump White House adviser who also serves as a Virginia GOP district representative, finally reached out to states, Arizona's Secretary of State told him to his face that he didn't trust him.
Meanwhile, election officials from both parties are feeling the pressure directly. Utah's Lieutenant Governor Deidre Henderson, in a Republican state, one of the reddest in the country, says that she is now under criminal investigation for not doing exactly what Donald Trump wants as it relates to Utah's elections. Right now, more than ever, you need to know your rights, make your plan, and vote early if you can. That's the best defense right now. And the biggest and best way to ensure that no interference can occur is make it too big, too big. Make the turnout so large that no one can stop you from making your voice heard.
But take a minute and just think about that for a second: how the Trump administration actively wants you to believe that the elections, that they claim they're not doing anything to interfere with the elections, and then at the same time seek out a voting machine to hack it and keep the results secret.
Now to JD Vance, because today he's in North Carolina, Hendersonville, North Carolina, and there was a protester standing behind JD Vance. Right now you're seeing across the country, by the way, that Trump-Vance Republicans are getting protested everywhere they go. We've reported on this consistently, but this protest was different. A young man gets up and says, 'Release the Epstein files.' The young man is Latino. Well, JD Vance turns around, looks at him, sees that he is Latino, and immediately tries to claim that he is illegal. Seriously, take a look.
That is what JD Vance has called someone who simply just looks brown. Racism on full display. Mind you, JD Vance's own wife is brown as well. But we're not going to talk about that one today, right? Let's be clear. What happened? A man asked for the release of the Epstein files, something Trump himself campaigned on and his supporters have demanded for years. The vice president responded by suggesting he was an undocumented immigrant.
And then there's this. By the way, today, Donald Trump says that New Mexico should immediately change its name to New America. We are not Mexico. We are the United States of America. He says the name would add great value and prestige to the state, demanding that election officials and officials in New Mexico change it from New Mexico to New America. That's not going to happen, by the way, but it's what he wants. At the same time, a black conservative influencer who volunteered for Trump's campaign now says she was kicked out of Ken Paxton's campaign rally. Yeah, you heard that. Ken Paxton's campaign rally. Why? Because simply she was brown. Take a listen. Or she was black. Take a listen.
